Evelyn Pringle: TeenScreen - The Law Suits Begin

TeenScreen - The Law Suits Begin

The scheme concocted
by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed forward by the
Bush administration to screen the entire nation's public
school population for mental illness and treat them with
controversial drugs was already setting off alarms among
parents all across the country. But in the state of
Indiana, the alarm just got louder.

Tax payers had better
get out their check books because school taxes are about to
go up as the law suits against school boards start mounting
over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to
children in the school.

The first notice of intent to sue
was filed this month in Indiana by Michael and Teresa
Rhoades who were outraged when they learned their daughter
had been given a psychological test at school without their
consent.

In December 2004, their daughter came home from
school and said she had been diagnosed with an obsessive
compulsive and social anxiety disorder after taking the
TeenScreen survey.

Teresa Rhoades always viewed her
daughter as a happy normal teenager. “I was absolutely
outraged that my daughter was told she had these two
conditions based off a computer test,” said Rhoades.

Attorney John Price, who is representing the Rhoadeses,
confirmed that he had sent a notice of tort claim to both
the school and Madison Center, which worked with the school
system to administer the test.

This action means that the
Rhoadeses are declaring their intent to file a lawsuit
against both entities. Price said state law requires a
notice of claim to be sent to any governmental agencies,
including schools, before a lawsuit can be filed against
them, according to the June 9, South Bend Tribune.

In the
notice, Teresa and Michael Rhoades claim the survey was
erroneous, improper, and done with reckless disregard for
their daughter's welfare and that they did not give the
school permission to give the test.

The parents allege
that when their daughter took the test, she was improperly
diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and social
anxiety disorder. That diagnosis, they claim, caused both
the teen and her parents emotional distress, and the family
intends to seek the "maximum amount of damages."

The
Indiana child was diagnosed with two disorders in one crack
but there are many more.

If a teen doesn't like doing
math assignments, parents should not worry. TeenScreen may
determine that the child simply has a mental illness known
as developmental-arithmetic disorder.

There's also a
diagnosis for those children who like to argue with their
parents, they may be afflicted with a mental illness known
oppositional-defiant disorder.

And for anybody critical
of the of the above 2 disorders, they may be suffering the
mental illness called noncompliance-with-treatment disorder.

No kidding, these illnesses are included in the more than
350 "mental disorders" listed in the American Psychiatric
Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, the insurance billing bible for mental
disorders.

Tax Dollars Already Being Funneled To
Pharma

In addition to lawsuits, tax dollars are
already funding TeenScreen and many of the drugs purchased
by the new customers it recruits.

While promoting
TeenScreen to Congress, its Executive Director, Laurie
Flynn, flat out lied when she told members of congress that
TeenScreen was free and its website statement that "The
program does not receive financial support from the
government and is not affiliated with, or funded by, any
pharmaceutical companies," is also a blatant lie.

On Oct
21, 2004 Bush authorized $82 million for suicide prevention
programs like TeenScreen and a report in Psychiatric Times
said the administration had proposed an increase in the
budget for the Center for Mental Health Service from $862
million in 2004 to $912 million in fiscal 2005. TeenScreen
is sure to get a cut of those tax dollars.

Federal tax
dollars are also being funneled through state governments to
fund TeenScreen. On Nov 17, 2004, Officials at the
University of South Florida Department of Child & Family
Studies said $98,641 was awarded to expand the TeenScreen
program in the Tampa Bay area.

In Ohio, under the
governor's Executive Budget for 2006 and 2007, the
Department of Mental Health has specifically earmarked
$70,000 for TeenScreen for each of those years, reports
investigator Sue Weibert.

On June, 2002 the Update
Newsletter published by the Tennessee Department of Mental
Health, reported that 170 Nashville students had completed a
TeenScreen survey. The Newsletter said the survey was funded
by grants from AdvoCare and Eli Lilly. Last I knew, Eli
Lilly was a pharmaceutical company.

The great news for
Pharma was that 96 of the 170 students who took the survey
ended up speaking to a therapist which no doubt resulted in
the recruitment of 96 new pill-popping teens.

Tax
Dollars Spent On Drugs

Unbeknownst to many, tax payers
are already paying an enormous price as a result of
marketing schemes designed to get students hooked on
antipsychotic drugs. A list of drugs that must be
prescribed for kids is already set up, modeled after a list
used in Texas since 1995 called the TMAP. The list contains
the most expensive drugs on the market.

In 2002, national
sales of antipsychotics reached $6.4 billion in 2002, making
them the fourth-highest-selling class of drugs, according to
IMS Health, a company that tracks drug sales, in the May
2003, New York Times. By 2004, sales had jumped by over $2
billion with antipsychotics sales totaling $8.8 billion --
$2.4 billion of which was paid for by state Medicaid funds,
according to the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones
Magazine.

Here's how this part of the scheme works. The
drug companies bribe state officials and donate money in the
form of "educational grants" to the states to approve and
implement these TMAP drug programs, and then in return,
state Medicaid programs fund the cost of the drugs with tax
dollars.

For instance, in Texas, Pfizer awarded $232,000
in grants to the Texas department of mental health to
"educate" mental health providers about TMAP, and in return,
the Texas Medicaid program spent $233 million tax dollars on
Pfizer drugs like Zoloft.

Eli Lilly awarded $109,000 in grants to "educate" state
mental health providers and as a result, Texas Medicaid
spent $328 million for Lilly's antipsychotic drug Zyprexa.

The TMAP was approved in Texas in 1995, and by February
9, 2001, an article in the Dallas Morning News, titled State
Spending More on Mental Illness Drugs reported: “Texas now
spends more money on medication to treat mental illness for
low-income residents than on any other type of prescription
drug.”

In addition to covering nearly 40% of the drugs for
Medicaid recipients, the state also spends about another $60
million a year on "hundreds of thousands of prescription
drugs for other state-funded programs at the Texas
Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation and the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice,” the paper
reported.

By the time the 2002-2003 budget was
established, Texas lawmakers had to increase the amount of
money allocated to the department of health and human
services by $1 billion with a significant portion earmarked
for prescription drugs, according to Texas officials.

In
1999, Ohio adopted its version of TMAP and by 2002 Ohio's
Medicaid program was spending $145 million on schizophrenia
medications alone.

California spent over $500 million on
the Atypicals Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroqual in 2003.

In
2002, Missouri Medicaid spent $104 million on three TMAP
drugs alone. The three topped the list of all other
medications covered by Medicaid, including HIV, cancer, and
heart drugs.

Chickens Come Home To
Roost

Pennsylvania taxpayers are now saddled with
PennMap, its own version of the Texas list of expensive
drugs, for the treatment of mentally ill, as a result of a
the pharmaceutical scheme used to infiltrate public
institutions and influence state officials and treatment
practices.

It has since been revealed by whistleblowers
Allen Jones and Stefan Kruszewiski that the Pennsylvania
officials who approved the drugs for PennMap were receiving
improper or illegal financial rewards from drug companies
involved in promoting the program.

Dr Stefan Kruszewski
was hired as a psychiatric consultant for the Pennsylvania
Department of Health and Human Services. He was in charge of
the state's mental health and substance misuse programs to
protect against fraud, waste, and abuse. He was fired after
he uncovered corrupt relations between Pennsylvania
politicians and pharmaceutical representatives and has since
filed a Whistleblower suit against the state.

Allen Jones
was an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector
General, and revealed that state officials with influence
over the PennMap program received financial benefits from
drug companies that had a stake in getting PennMap accepted.
Jones was fired after he made his discoveries known to the
BMJ and the New York Times when his superiors ordered him to
stop his investigation. He also has filed a Whistleblower
suit.

Well, it looks like the chickens have finally come
home to roost in Pennsylvania.

One of the officials that
Jones named was Steven Fiorello. On April 15, 2005 the
Associated Press reported that Pennsylvania's top pharmacist
repeatedly took money from Pfizer and other outside sources,
violating ethics laws, a government panel found.

The
State Ethics Commission fined Fiorello more than $27,000 and
referred the case to the state attorney general's office for
possible criminal prosecution.

The commission cited
repeated conflicts between Fiorello's unofficial activities
and his official duties, which included serving on a panel
that decides which drugs may be given to patients at the
nine state mental hospitals. The report also cited repeated
failures to disclose his income from drug companies, Pfizer
and Janssen, and other outside sources.

It seems Fiorello
became a member of Pfizer's "advisory council'' around the
same time he joined the PennMap panel. The council held
annual meetings, apparently "to solicit input from
health-care professionals to help Pfizer define its
commercial strategies for its products," the commission said
in the report.

The ethics committee also discovered a
"Medical Director's Education Account," which was funded by
unrestricted educational grants from pharmaceutical
companies and that Fiorello himself had solicited funds for
the account.

It was recently announce that these
"educational" grants that have benefited state officials who
were in positions to approve the TMAP lists are finally
going to be investigated by a senate committee.

On June
10, 2005, Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus issued a
Press Release that said they have asked a number of large
drug makers to explain a marketing practice where the
companies give money to state governments and other
organizations in the form of grants. The drug companies call
the awards educational grants, but the senators are
concerned that the dollars are more focused on product
promotion than education, the release said.

Grassley is
chairman and Baucus is ranking member of the Senate
Committee on Finance, which has legislative and oversight
responsibility for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

In
addition, on June 9, 2005, the senators sent a letter to
drug companies that states in part, "The Committee seeks
further information on this topic so that it can assess how
educational grants are used, in what contexts and for what
purposes, and who receives them."

The Senators said their inquiry is based on reports that
some companies have awarded these grants to health care
providers as inducements to those providers to prescribe
medications the companies produce. In other cases, such
grants to state agencies may have prompted those agencies to
develop programs leading to over-medication of patients at
the expense of patient health or to unnecessary expense for
taxpayers.

"We need to know how this behind-the-scenes
funneling of money is influencing decision makers," Grassley
said, "The decisions result in the government spending
billions of dollars on drugs. The tactics look aggressive,
and the response on behalf of the public needs to be just as
vigorous."

This committee was needed because Pennsylvania
is merely the tip of the iceberg. Many of the same tactics
have been used in other states like Florida with Jim
McDonough, Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control,
who is listed as an “advisor” to TeenScreen on its website.
TeenScreen gifted McDonough's office with $180,000 to get
TeenScreen set up.

However, Executive Director, Laurie
Flynn, is now crying foul because she doesn't feel the money
has been put to good use since McDonough failed to get the
program in all the schools as promised, in large part
because he met his match in Ken Kramer.

In Ohio there's
Mike Hogan, Director of the Ohio Department of Mental
Health. He's hooked in with Parexel Medical Marketing, a
front group that takes Pharma money to set "advisory panels"
for Pharma. The panel memberships are made up exclusively of
Mental Health, Medicaid and other Directors from the various
states. Michael Hogan is listed as an advisory board
member.

The panel members are treated to trips, first
class accommodations and other perks in exchange for showing
up and listening to a spiel by Janssen sales personnel who
direct the course of the meetings. The same kinds of
meetings that Fiorello attended.

Hopefully will be just a
matter of time before the new senate committee disbands this
gang of pharma-backed government pill-pushers.

Trying
To Save The Children

Dire warnings against mass mental
health screening are coming from every segment of society,
including parents, physicians, academics, journalists, and
human rights groups because the influence of the
pharmaceutical industry in this scheme is so patently
obvious.

People are particularly worried about saving the
children from senseless and dangerous drugging. According to
long-time anti-child drugging advocate, Doyle Mills,
"Psychiatry has a long history of abject failure.
Psychiatric treatments - drugs, electroconvulsive therapy,
lobotomies - have harmed millions and robbed them of any
hope of a normal life."

Expert records researcher, Ken
Kramer, has been fighting against child drugging for years
has conducted a research project on child suicides in
Florida that determined that medicating kids with the types
of dangerous mind-altering drugs on these lists is causing
suicide. He helped defeat TeenScreen's attempt to gain
access to schools in 2 of Florida's largest counties. Ken
has a TeenScreen website at
http://www.psychsearch.net/teenscreen.html

Dr Karen
Effrem, a pediatrician and strong opponent of mandatory
screening recently warned, "Universal mental health
screening and the drugging of children ... needs to be
stopped so that many thousands if not millions of children
will be saved from receiving stigmatizing diagnoses that
would follow them for the rest of their lives. America's
school children should not be medicated by expensive,
ineffective, and dangerous medications based on vague and
dubious diagnoses."

In a letter to the editor in the
Washington Times on October 31, 2004, Effrem summed up the
dangers of using tax dollars to fund mass mental health
screening of children:

"Given the very real problems of
already existing coercion, subjective criteria, dangerous
and ineffective medication, and the failure of screening to
prevent suicide ... Congress would be wise to withhold the
$44 million requested for state grants."

The nation's
first law suit has been filed and let it serve as a warning
to other schools across the country to think twice before
allowing the TeenScreen recruitment scheme to zero in on
their students.

*************

Evelyn Pringle epringle05@yahoo.com

(Evelyn
Pringle is a columnist for Independent Media TV and an
investigative journalist focused on corruption in
government)

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